Blue Mountain : Property buyers defrauded

COLOMBO (News 1st): Recently we uncovered a large number of financial frauds allegedly carried out by Blue Mountain under the guise of real estate. The focus is on a number of deals done with regard to the maiden 7-star apartment complex in Colombo which was to be built by this company. Construction began for ''Pitabaddara Udagalhena school '' the 7-star apartment complex in Bambalapitiya on the 19th of January 2019. When construction began for this project it was described as a mega project consisting of 616 apartments, 50 floors divided between two towers, equipped with a helipad, and was advertised as one of the largest condominium projects. Subsequently, in the year 2018, Blue Mountain entered into an agreement with a Chinese construction company creating more trust in the project among the general public. However, it has been months since the construction of the project was halted. We attempted to contact the numbers listed for inquiries regarding the Blue Mountain's Achilleion project. This was the response we got. The luxury condominium project which was to be constructed under a number of phases accepted payments from buyers and many of the buyers had paid more than 50% of the condominium's value. The total value of the money collected from the buyers is estimated at about Rs. 2 billion. It has been revealed that loans for the Achilleion' project had also been taken from four banks. However, the buyers allege that no responsible official of the company is responding. Allegations are also been levelled against Blue Mountain for committing large scale financial fraud when selling off lands in many parts of the country. They had first mortgaged the land to a bank and then sold it off to the buyers resulting in the buyer losing both their money and the plot of land. A land sold in such a manner is already been prepared to be auctioned off by a commercial bank. Generally, a bank only grants a sum of 75% of the land value when it is mortgaged to the bank. If that is the case then is it not possible to auction off the other plots of land in question, in a similar manner and use the proceeds of the sale to settle the bank loans and then use the rest to reimburse the buyers? Although the regulations on land transactions are lacking, authorized commercial banks are regulated by the Central Bank. Therefore is it not possible for the Central Bank to intervene and provide some sort of concession to the customers of Blue Mountain?